Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 42, 25 October 1923, Page 18

Current Topics

Chesterton on the Press . . In the course of a debate in London on modern journalism, Mr. G. K. Chesterton emphasised the enormous superiority of what journalists say to what they write. It* was remarkable that the man who wrote a long and tiresome leading article, in which he said: “We trust that we shall hear no l more of these allegations such as have never before been brought, against a Cabinet Minister”— that same man the night before in some tavern or other healthy place had been telling extremely funny and truthful stories . about Lloyd Georg© or Bonar Law. Newspapers were, as a matter of fact, much below the ordinary ton© of conversation. • Did the British * public learn anything from the press about the extraordinary events that caused the change of front towards Ireland? All the press did was to call Michael Collins a murderous assassin on the Monday and a noble national hero on the Tuesday. (Laughter.) He always thought the Irish should govern themselves, but he wanted the English to govern themselves, too and in order that they should be able to do that they ought to have some remote notion of what their rulers were up to. x If the papers had given space to such things as the defeat of Socialism by the peasants in Russia or the truth about the sale of peerages and the party funds, we might • perhaps have had only eight instead of ten pictures of ladies paddling at Ramsgate, or less than a whole page of on© of those elevating Sunday papers devoted to the views of Miss Jane Burr on why she wore trousers. (Laughter.) v We .might have missed some of these things in return for getting commonplace daily knowledge of our own affairs and those of the world. The price we did in fact pay forth© press, and it was not worth it, was the bewilderment of the English people and the failure of the English power. - - In lighter vein “Lucio,” in the Manchester Guardian , thus satirises Fleet Street and its penmen : A week ago the weather was mellifluous and bland; Mild anti-cyclones brooded o’er a truly grateful land; Whereat the evening papers promptly started to repeat Their annual apprehensions of intolerable heat. Perhaps’ they’re feeling better now; the danger should be past; The land is swept and ravaged by a bold and bitter blast; The anti-cyclones vanish and, by, this disgusting day, I accuse these " wretched scribes of having frightened them away ! . I wish there were a Press Bureau empowered to extirpate " .. . The men who write and even more— men insti- •: gate ; These yarns about a “heat wave” and the need for cooling drinks When “Bless me, what a topping day!” is all the wise man thinks. ■ • v However, they have had their way; with‘troubles at an end -. > v - .'V •- They now can watch the deluge (and the mercury) descend. , • '' And I hope they like their picture; but for me I sit and grunt - “Confound the man who treats a little; sunshine as a . stunt!” . • ■ ' /. % A v- v ■ Irish Graves in Rome ■ . ‘. A writer quoted by the Irish: Catholic gives us an interesting paragraph .about the most historic of the graves of exiled Gaels in Rome': ./ . , / ; “When the evening sum is low, men ’ of Celtic blood

from three continents in Rom© love tq climb the Janiculum Hill to kneel by the tomb of a moire heroic prince, the great Hugh O’Neill, who with Rory O’Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnel, are the subject of The Flight of the Earls, written on their escape from the clutches of Elizabeth in 1608. After the failure of their rising against the foreign host the Prince of Tyrone and the Prince of Tyrconnel left the soil which their ancestors had ruled for a thousand years, and, tired in body but dauntless in soul, arrived at Rome welcomed by Pop© Pius Y., who with all Christendom regarded them as confessors of the*’Faith. In the nave of the Church of S. Pietro in Montorio are the gravestones of Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone (died old and blind in 1616); of Hugh, his son, Baron of Dungannon (died 1609); and of Roderick (Rory) O’Donnell (died in 1608). When th© Most Rev. Dr. O’Donnell, now Coadjutor of Cardinal Logue, Archbishop of Armagh, preached at the celebration of the Third Centenary of the death of the great Hugh on the Janiculum Hill in May, 1920, in presence of so many prelates, priests, and laymen from America, Australia, and various parts of Europe, people welcomed once more in Rome the voice of * on© -of the royal O’Donnells.’” / Now arises the memory of November days when in our Lehrejahren we used to kneel by a vault in the Campo Santo at San Lorenzo to pray for our fellow students, young Irish Levites whose studies were interrupted by death, whose services were great in intention only, and not measured ‘by the long lapse of years. Among those youths, sons of our dear Alma Mater, slept, awaiting a glorious resurrection, the saintly Archbishop of Ephesus, Tobias Kirby, for long years' Rector of the Collegio Irlandese, and from studenthood to death the friend of the great and gifted, Leo XIII. There are others yet. To Tivoli, with its delightful' mountain breezes, its grateful shades of immemorial olive groves, its historical ruins, its thundering cascades, we used to adjourn for rest and recreation during the hot months of the Roman summer. And there, in a quiet graveyard under the hills, close by the headling Anio, some of the boys found a long rest that knows no waking in this world. Roma, Amor The Eternal City holds them all for the day when they shall arise for eternity. They cam© to her with love, and with love she clasps them in her sacred soil, those wild geese.of Eire whose tombs we used to pray beside in the down-gone years when every day was as long as twenty days are now. The love of Rom© lasts lifelong. They who have learned to, know her can never forget her. Which of us that knelt at her shrines, * prayed by her graves, climbed her hills, has not yearned to return in after life and haply to lie down there to rest when the end of the day is nigh-? Education-Old and New The tendency in modern education to specialise, in accordance with the views of th© supporters of the elective system, is condemned on many grounds, not only by Catholics but by thinkers of all classes and creeds. Electivism is a growth of the fanciful and mischievous dreams of Rousseau, who would allow a-, child to follow his natural bent even though it led to harm. It has its proper place in the selection of special university courses, but it is wrong and malig- - nant iii its effects when introduced into colleges and high schools. Commenting on this modern fad, Lowell said: “I had rather, the college turn out one of Aristotle’s four-square men, capable of holding his own in whatever field he may be cast, than a score of lop-sided ones, developed abnormally in one direction.” - The outcome of such education, or rather instruction . it is not education in the true sens© —is mental deformity. A student turned out in this way is likely to be a failure. “He becomes a narrow specialist, r he swells the host of those’ men who even now afflict the community, men who are incapable of forming a sane opinion on any question which cannot be decided by a laboratory experiment. have no perception of the interrelations of. the various branches of knowledge ; they lack all appreciation of what is noble and sublime; above all they are liable to ignore. or even - - ..V J A'--.' -\ : 7 *, .-- •

\w> deny, that beyond the narrow limits of * natural science lie truths of the utmost importance, unattainable “by any process of synthetic reasoning. It is such warped . specialists that Goethe ridicules in the famous passage in Faust (part 2, act 1) ‘ | Herein you learned men I recognise: / What you touch not miles distant from you lies; What you grasp not, is naught in sooth to you; What you count not, cannot you deem be true; What you, weigh not, that hath for you no weight; What you coin not, you’re sure is counterfeit.” . Professor Muenster says of the elective system: : . “Are elective studies really elected at all? I mean do they really represent the deeper desires and demands of the individual, or do they not simply represent the cumulation of a hundred chance influences? I have intentionally lingered on the story of my shifting interests in boyhood; it is more or less the'story of every half-way intelligent boy or girl. A. little bit of talent, a petty caprice favored by accident, - a contagious craze or fad, a chance demand for something of which scarcely the outside is known, —all these stir and buzz in every boyhood.; but to follow 'such superficial moods would mean dissolution of all organised life, and education would be an empty word. ... From whatever standpoint’ I view it, the tendency to base the school on elective studies seems to- me a mistake.” Mr. Tetlow calls , the elective system “elective chaos and philosophical anarchism,” and he lays down the following propositions: The students are not competent to direct their own studies ; most of the parents are utterly incompetent to’ make an intelligent choice, too many . will readily accept the choice made by the children; the principals and teachers are in most cases incompetent to make a wise choice for the pupils, as they are hardly ever sufficiently acquainted • with individual scholars. • ; The General of the Jesuits thus sums up the objections to the new inventions: “As to the methods, ever easier and easier, which are being excogitated, whatever convenience may be found in them, there is this grave inconvenience : first, that which is acquired without labor, adheres but lightly to the mind, and what is summarily gathered is summarily forgotten ; secondly, and this though not adverted to by many is a much more serious injury, almost the principal fruit of a boy’s training is sacrificed, which is, accustoming himself from an early age to serious application required for hard work.” .Hence, the elective System will not give us foursquare men and women; it will not give depth and breadth of view; it will not lay a sound foundation for culture; but it will give us narrow'-minded sciolists and foolish pedants who would measure truth by their own poor rushlights. .- Rome and Wales The Irish people clung to their faith, in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword. In Scotland a brave minority kept the lamp burning through the years until the days of persecution passed by. But there are two other strongholds of the Gael where the Church almost vanished completely, and where it may be almost said that it died of neglect. In the lovely' little Kingdom of Man, set in the seas between Ireland, England, and Scotland, the Catholic Church practically ceased to exist, although to-day there is a tiny growth noticeable.- In Wales, the Catholics also faded away after the Reformation, and whatever vigor is there at present is almost wholly due to the,, influx of Irish immigrants during the past sixty years.. : v ; ; “For over a thousand years Wales was an intensely, Catholic nation,” declared Mr. J. E. de -Hirsch-Davies, in,a recent lecture at St. Illtyd ? s Hall, Cardiff, Wales,'" speaking on the historic relations between the early British Church and the See of Rome. Mr. HirschDavies is a recognised authority ,on the history and literature of Wales, and . he has \ received from • the -. National . Eisteddfod: the title ; of s “Welsh Scholar.” ? Mr. Davies, in the course of his address,-said that

m the history of the British people there had been two Saxon invasions. % The first took away from the Welsh ■ people their country. The second took away their religion. ‘ - :.V- ' r< _ For over a thousand years Wales was an intensely Catholic nation. Not many * people knew that, and there were many who did not want to know it. For over a thousand years they had fought to retain their independence, but never did they put up a more determined fight than when in the 16th century they fought to defend the religion of their fathers against what in those days was called contemptuously “the religion of the Saxon.” '/ v \ ; v•. ' & - • "The Welsh people were never opposed to Rome. From the time of Gild as, from the time of Howel Dda, who went to Rome to'. get the Pope to confirm his tribal laws from the time of Giraldus Cambrensis, who travelled from time to time to Rome to fight, not against the Pope, but against Canterbury; from the time of Llewellyn the Great, who appealed to the Pope, -against the King of England, Wales had never been against Rome. " ° . _ On the contrary, Wales knew that the golden age of her history was the'long period when she was in communion with Rome. No small share of the great work of planting or confirming the Catholic religion 1 in Ireland and Brittany was due to the school of St. Illtyd and the labors of St. David. In the sixth century Wales was famous not only or its missionaries and saints, but also for its poets. The Catholic Church in Wales was of the same type as elsewhere in the West in its teaching its practice, its organisation, its hierarchy. , . -*- 11 Ridas’ time the country was full of monasteries, which were great and vigorous schools of Catholic devotion and learning. From Llantwit-major and Caerleon in the south to Bangor in the north that portion of Britain, with its long roll of saints and Christian missionaries, SS. Dubritius, Teilo, David, Gildas, Cadoc, Paulinus, and a host of others, was one of the brightest jewels in the crown of the ‘ Catholic Church, as it continued to be right through the Middle Ages. ° ■_ In the “Laws of Wales’’ drawn up by the Welsh Prince, called Howel the Good, every doctrine, every practice associated" with the normal life of a Catholic community were to be found in full working order. The authority of the Pope was clearly assumed and clearly expressed. V J . : It was the Welsh custom to consecrate bishops on the Festival of St. : Peter’s Chair. There was no question about the position occupied by the Roman Pontiff in the Ancient Laws of Wales. •*■. * Some years ago it was said some very courageous platform orator committed himself to the statement that St. Patrick was a Protestant. History does not : record what happened to that' brave man. But it is easier to call St. Patrick a Protestant than to deny that Howel Dda and his Welsh tribesmen were Catholics united to the See of Peter. The monastic system was, of course, an organic part of the ecclesiastical order; in fact the Welsh word for “religion” (crefydd). meant a monastic Order; If the Welsh people in the time of Howel Dda were such devout Catholics, .it was not humanly possible for- ; such a vigorous Catholic tradition to have established itself in their national life and their social institutions without a long and well-tested experience. The testimony of the Welsh Laws seemed to point, out that the Catholic tradition had been established among the Welsh people from a distant past. >■ It was impossible not to feel that, the traditions of the Catholic Church had never, really beneath the- surface, ceased to be a determining factor in the life of the nation. • •, y - - Whether as Welshmen they took an interest in her secular history, or in her. spiritual traditions, or in her ancient literature or in her ancient ruins, wherever ’ they turned, they would come across vestiges of a Welsh civilisation which had sprung out of the heart of Catholicism. ; r ; ■ - 'V-- ■■.,;■■■ : That fabric was destroyed in the sixteenth century,

but it* foundations • had been ; laid afresh: in that, their native land, and, like the temple of old, it might be after all that the - glory r of " that - second house, : rising silently stone upon stone,; might be ■ more magnificent even than;the glory of the first. ■ ' -.